


less-than

by Askance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Other, Season/Series 10, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:03:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3939544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't want romance. He doesn't want sex, candlelight, wedding bells, none of that. He just wants Dean to <i>know</i>. Know and live in it. </p>
<p>He pictures Goliath stepping on his chest, squeezing down his heart to the point of rupture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	less-than

On Valentine's Day, he spends fifteen minutes in the ransacked seasonal candy aisle until he finds one—a Whitman's sampler no bigger than the palm of his hand, slick red cardboard in the clumsy shape of a heart. At the Customer Service desk he borrows a near-empty pen that is chained to the surface to scratch out the names in the spaces on the top.

 

TO: DEAN. FROM: CAS.

 

He sits on the nearest bench outside the store, turning it over and over in his hands. Immediately regretting it. Scrutinising the list of chocolates inside that was printed on the back. Realising how stupid it is to buy chocolate for someone when you aren't even sure they like chocolate. Does Dean like chocolate? Does he eat coconut? Is he allergic to nuts? He doesn't remember—isn't sure he ever knew at all.

 

This is what humans do, or so he's been told. It doesn't help the nervous heat in his gut.

 

On the surface of the sampler he can almost see his own smudged reflection—two dark holes in a smear of flesh.

 

He thinks about what Dean will say. How he'll react; if he'll react at all. If he'll think it's sweet—stupid—crazy—awful. He remembers that he never discovered for sure, when he was replacing synapses and taste buds, the things that Dean liked in people, the things that Dean would love them for.

 

He doesn't know if Dean has even broached this in his mind. Doesn't know if Dean would ever consider anything beyond friendship with a body like this one. He never got the hang of being in the middle, like Hannah, wafting between vessels with no concern for the things between their legs, still Hannah all the same; he wishes he weren't so ingrained in this body with its calloused fingers and its deep-set eyes and its hardness, leanness. He loves Jimmy Novak, but he doesn't know if Dean does.

 

Two dark holes in a smear of flesh; it's not something he could describe as lovely.

 

This is what humans do. When they fall in love, they say it. With their words, with their gifts, with their selves. But no one ever told him about the uncertainty, the anxiety, the deep and simple knowing that what you feel may not be what they—

 

He drops the Whitman's sampler in the trash.

* * *

 

He sees Dean with Claire and there's a pang of longing in him that he can never quite describe. They bounce off each other like molecules dancing. They're so alike. He wonders sometimes if Jimmy's love for the things his daughter is—was—have looped into the strands of his own being—if what he looks for in the things he loves, now, are bits of Claire.

 

He wants to tell someone this thing he has discovered of himself. That he loves Dean Winchester. That it is the closest he has come to finding the nurturing light of God on this Earth, the things he feels in the deepest parts of his chest. He wants to tell Sam, most of all, and he isn't sure why—maybe because Sam will understand, in the way that Sam always, unequivocally, understands.

 

He has hoped for a long time that Dean will simply _get_ it. See the backflips and trapeze acts he goes through to keep that man safe, protected. That he won't have to hand over a gaudy red Valentine or say those dangerous irrevocable words, that Dean will just turn to him, eventually, and know. But there isn't any time for things like that, not now.

 

He doesn't want romance. He doesn't want sex, candlelight, wedding bells, none of that. He just wants Dean to  _know._ Know and live in it. He pictures Goliath stepping on his chest, squeezing down his heart to the point of rupture.

 

There has to be a way. There has to be a  _when._

* * *

 

The bunker reeks of screaming death. He doesn't know which words are coming out of his mouth. Only that he cannot stop saying that name. _Dean. Dean._ Dean, don't go. Dean, come back. Dean, let us help you. Every minute turn of Dean's body away from him hurts down in the sharpest parts of his gut. When Dean turns back, his eyes flat as coins, and comes for him, he feels relief before fear.

 

He doesn't know which words are coming out of his mouth except that the important ones, the ones that might make a difference, aren't coming. They're snagged in the back of his throat. His head hits the table, over and over. He feels butterfly bones breaking, blood in his eyes. His brain is a muffled roar; there is nothing but impact of skull on wood. He's terrified, really. He hasn't ever been terrified before, but here—he doesn't know whose hands are pummeling into him, and it scares him.

 

Nothing registers until Dean is above him, blade pointed down towards his eye. He has one last chance to try. But Dean's eyes are flat as coins, and he knows he shouldn't bother.

 

He doesn't hear the blade entering the book inches from his face. Instead he hears the curious violent sound of a heart coming undone. He wonders whose it is until he realises.

* * *

 

Sam finds him like that, lying on the floor, the blade still humming next to him. All he can think about is chocolate. A taste he'd never liked, particularly. Too changeable. He thinks how stupid it is, the shape that humans give to fake cardboard hearts—nothing like the real thing at all.

 

Sam's hands are shaking while he helps him up, finds band-Aids in the wreckage, cleans blood from his face. He's always wanted to tell him, but now is not the time. He can hear Sam's heartbeat, a loud thing, and so close by. It sounds heavy, like it's sinking in his chest.

 

“He doesn't,” is what he says. Sam looks at him, his eyes sore and swollen. He's been crying, though he won't show it. He swallows, regrets what he's saying even as it climbs out of his mouth. “He doesn't love us anymore.”

 

It isn't true, but it's what he feels. This is what humans do, or so he's been told. They feel, even when it kills them.

 

Exhausted, he lets his forehead rest tenuously on Sam's shoulder, and Sam lets him. Sam's hands settle on his thighs. There is an arch of empty space between them. Sam's face presses sideways into his neck. Something hot moistens his collar. He thinks about that stupid Whitman's sampler and his dark hole-eyes on its surface; how he hates it now. How he hates that he picked someone so ruinous to love so much.

 

If he knew—what then?

 

Sam needs to be touched. He touches him, at the base of his neck, where it feels right, for some reason, his fingers flat on that jugular curve, as if holding his head in place. _I love you, too,_ he wants to say, because with Sam that kind of thing is easy; with Sam there's no fear, because it's a different kind of love. Sam does not make his heart unravel.

 

He wishes they could bind their unstrung hearts together. Just long enough to get through this. Those two ugly bulbous shapes pressed against each other for warmth and strength, the shape of a Whitman's sampler box.

 

Oh.

* * *

 

When the time comes, centuries from now, and Dean's flat eyes are black and beetled, and it falls to him to conjure up that light and burn him out, he thinks—he'll take his heart and sew it to his own, and let it beat, foul, charred, but close, and sour him. It will have to be enough.

 

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] less-than](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12268233) by [riversfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/riversfire/pseuds/riversfire)




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